SO had an opportunity to branch out into a thriving community of people helping each other, I can't state with any authority if that would have been a better end goal as they had a nice exit, but maybe if it did then it could have better maintained its energy in the wake of AI.

You say I should have stuck to newsgroups but SO sucked all the energy out of those spaces. I have 25k rep on the site so its not like I wasn't activately engaged and helped a lot of people on there, I just wish it had been more than what it was.